Thursday, January 28, 2010

Unnamed Official Confirms Constellation Program Will Be Canceled.

The Orlando
Sentinel (1/28, Block) reports, "Administration officials and a former
astronaut on Wednesday called President Obama's plans for NASA 'exciting' and
'bold,' saying he was replacing a failed moon program with a new $6 billion
project to develop commercial rockets capable of taking astronauts into orbit."
The plan, described by an unnamed White House and NASA official and Augustine
Commission member Sally Ride, would see an annual increase to NASA's budget over
the next five years. At the teleconference, the "NASA official stressed that
just because the Constellation program to return humans to the moon and its Ares
I and Ares V rockets were going to be canceled did not mean that the Obama
administration was abandoning exploration and human spaceflight." However, when
questioned, "officials repeatedly dodged the question of what plans the
administration had for a heavy-lift
rocket."

However, Florida
Today (1/28, Halvorson) notes "Obama's space plan will be a hard sell in
Congress. Even ardent Obama supporters and some key space advisers are taken
aback." Sen. Bill Nelson warned the plan would "decimate the space program,"
while Rep. Bill Posey called the plan a "slow death" for NASA's manned
spaceflight program. In contrast, the unnamed NASA official said it was a
"serious, serious effort" to reduce the manned spaceflight gap after the shuttle
program ends. The St.
Petersburg Times (1/28, Leary) notes in an article about the reaction
to Obama's State of the Union address, reports Nelson said, "On the downside,
we're going to have to get the president to do more for NASA. America's global
leadership in science and technology is at stake if we don't maintain a more
robust space exploration
program."

Meanwhile, FOX
News (1/27, Clark) reports, "Marty Hauser, vice president of Washington
operations for the Space Foundation, an advocacy group, said that while the
proposal would hurt in the short term, it does have the potential to create jobs
in the long term if the objective is to privatize space flight." However, the
article notes "Republican lawmakers wasted no time in blasting the president."
Industry leaders also reportedly "expressed dismay" over a potential budget
freeze for NASA, according to some previous reports. Louis Friedman, executive
director of the Planetary Society, said, "I think NASA's value as an economic
engine for the country is long understood in theory, long underplayed in
Congress.

Bolden Discusses NASA's Future In Israel.
In an article titled "'An Israeli Astronaut? There May be No More Astronauts At
All!,'" the Israel
National News (1/28, Kempinski) posted a video of NASA Administrator
Charles Bolden speaking to the press at the Ilan Ramon International Space
Conference. "Bolden related to a number of exciting topics in the field of
space and beyond. In the following video the NASA Chief discusses the option of
sending another Israeli astronaut into space, the mission of saving the planet
from asteroids, and commercial flights to the
moon."

End Of Constellation Raises New Questions.
Popular
Mechanics (1/27, Pappalardo) gives "a breakdown of the some questions
to ask during the aftermath of the apparent collapse of the United States' human
space flight program." These include questions like who would benefit from the
shift in NASA budget priorities, whether the Defense Department will be the
"heir" to NASA, and if astronauts are "going extinct" among others.
Furthermore, "Without the appeal of a human flight program, will fewer aspiring
scientists and engineers be lured into the agency and towards military and
private space? Will the research end of NASA suffer from this lack of
inspirational purpose? What are the geopolitical ramifications, if any, of this
waning of American
power?"